Datafied Research: Capture Things

Datafied Research: Capture Things

The panel of things will address the self-fulfilling prophecy of datafied research through some trinkets we grabbed out of an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia.

The subject of our passions have become thingified? Or have we become the object, the thing? How do we feel about these inter-relations? Spam zombies, image standardisation, toolkits, performing archives, software interfaces, digital data funerals, the stuff of things, and other things. The panel of things will address the self-fulfilling prophecy of datafied research through some trinkets we grabbed out of an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia (entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge).

About Datafied ResearchDatafied Research launches the outcome of a Ph.D. seminar organised by the Centre for Participatory IT at Aarhus University, School of Creative Media at Hong Kong City University and transmediale. It is the fourth of its kind in an ongoing collaboration between transmediale, Aarhus University, and changing partners (Universität der Künste Berlin 2011, Leuphana Universität 2012, and Kunsthal Aarhus 2013). The aims of the events are to address the thematic framework of transmediale as a research topic, and to publish a ‘peer-reviewed’ newspaper to be launched at the festival. Furthermore, the participating researchers are invited to submit their work to the online academic journal APRJA (A Peer Reviewed Journal About Datafied Research).
By addressing Datafied Research, the workshop and the publications address popular notions of datafication; including “the datafied self”,” the datafied city”, “datafied management”, and call for a reflection on the darker forces involved in capturing and using data – also within research itself.
We produce, share, collect, archive, use and misuse, knowingly or not, massive amounts of data, but what does “capture” do to us? What are the inter-subjective relations between data-commodity and human subjects? By asking these questions, the participants seek insights into the logics of data flows between materials, things, data, code, software, interfaces and other stuff that permeates a culture of “capture all”. Rather than merely mimicking the sciences’ use of (big) data, the arts and humanities must explore the complex questions of what datafication does to us, and how we might begin to do things to it.